Spain

The Cross of Burgundy, used by Spanish naval and military forces under the House of Habsburg and sporadically as a war flag until 1843; it is germane to stories set in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Ruled Britannia.

After unification, Spain became one of the first European powers to fully explore, colonize and exploit the New World. For a time, Spain was Europe's leading power. However, by the 18th century, Spain's power had diminished. It endured defeats at the hands of Britain in colonial wars, costing it territory. Throughout the 19th century, Spain endured the loss of its New World possessions as its various colonies followed the United States' lead and gained independence. Spain's defeat at the hands of the U.S. in 1898 during the Spanish-American War confirmed that Spain's glory days were done.

The 20th century saw the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Francisco Franco as its repressive fascist leader. While initially something of a pariah given Franco's ties to NaziGermany during the Civil War, Franco's opposition to the Soviet Union led to closer ties between Spain and the United States during the Cold War period. Upon Franco's death in 1975, a new democratic constitution was adopted, and King Juan Carlos I took the throne.

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By the early 1300s, the Byzantine Empire had reconquered the south-eastern part of Ispania, along the coast of the Inner Sea and up to the Pyrenees. The north-western areas and the western part of the coast remained in barbarian hands.

Spain, much like France, came by its Atlantean holdings in a roundabout way. After Edward Radcliffe of England established New Hastings in northern Atlantis, a settlement called Gernika was established by Basques further south. Galicians soon followed suit.[1] Spain itself was still divided between two kingdoms, and the Basques and the Galicians saw Atlantis as an opportunity to flee the chaos of the Iberian Peninsula.

In the meantime, Spain had unified under one kingdom. It began to take a more active hand in running the Basque holdings in Atlantis and southern Terranova. By the early 16th century, Spain had a substantial empire in Terranova, subduing the gold-rich indigenous Terranovan empires.[3] Its Atlantean holdings, however, were now an afterthought.[4]

After peaking in the mid 16th century, Spain's power in the region began to wain. In the 17th century, Spain's ships fell prey to Atlantean pirates based in Avalon.[5] However, Spain did not contribute to the fleet that destroyed the pirates.

In the mid-18th century, Spain and France were at war with England. Spain's Atlantean possessions were attacked by English Atlanteans under the command of Major Victor Radcliff, demonstrating their vulnerability.[6] Spain's ally France was completely defeated. France lost its Atlantean possessions, and Spain lost its buffer against England. Worse still, Radcliff's attack began an insurrection among the slaves which raged on even after the war in Atlantis had ended, although it was ultimately put down.

Spain and Spanish Atlantis did not participate in the Atlantean War of Independence; fighting stayed within English-controlled Atlantis, and Spain did not join France in declaring war on Britain.[7]

In the early part of the 19th century, generations after the United States of Atlantis gained its independence, Spain sold its Atlantean holdings to the new country,[8] but retained colonies on islands to the south.[9]

In one alternate visited by Crosstime Traffic, the Great Black Deaths wiped out 80% of the population of Europe, including Spain, which had been on the verge of pushing out its Muslim rulers. Instead, Spain was left virtually empty,[11], and the Muslims retook Spain and made in roads into the rest of Europe,[12] This time, the Muslims made sure of their control of the peninsula, resulting in a Spain with a Muslim character persisting into the 21st century.[13]Madrid was an important global city, with a population of a quarter to a half a million.[14]

A group of illegal Crosstimers set up a slavery ring in this Madrid and in still another alternate's Spain. In this second alternate, the Roman Republic had been defeated in the Samnite Wars of the fourth Century B.C. and the Roman Empire never came into being, nor did anybody else create a comparable empire in the Mediterranean.[15] This 21st Century analog of Spain was divided between Punic people along the shores, whose ancestors came from Carthage, and people similar to Basques in the interior, including in the countryside on the site of Madrid. Gunpowder had not been invented, and the people used bows and arrows.[16]

When the renegade Crosstimers first appeared in their timeline, setting up an estate with slaves, some locally captured and other imported from different timelines, the people resisted courageously but hopelessly, faced with the home timeline's weapons, and were again and again slaughtered.[17]

Annette Klein managed to escape from slavery and alert Crosstime Traffic to what was going on.[18] Crosstime Traffic maintained a large office in Madrid and was on good terms with the authorities. The Spanish police took care of raiding the renegades' Madrid headquarters, while the Spanish Army loaned a couple of squads to Crosstime, which was taken to the timeline where the renegades conducted their illegal activities.[19] The renegades' slave-estate was broken up, and the people of this alternate Spain were mostly left to themselves, except for a few hidden observers from Crosstime Traffic.

Spain was the first country to explore the New World, establishing some colonies in South America. By the end of the 17th century, only two of those colonies were successful: Argentina and New Granada. The Spanish settlers had a difficult time maintaining long-term colonies, as the climate of South America was not conducive to the agricultural practices of Europe. Moreover, the creatures known as sims were a constant threat to the safety and well-being of the settlers.

Spanish explorers brought sims back to Europe for study and servitude. It was believed by many in England that Spaniards copulated with female sims, and that they baptized the sims, converting them to Catholicism.

Following the invasion and conquest of England, Philip's daughter Isabella replaced Elizabeth Tudor as Queen of England. Throughout her 10-year reign, a large Anglo-Hiberno-Spanish military presence was maintained in England to support Isabella's rule. These forces, along with Isabella and her husband, King Albert, were expelled by an English uprising led by Sir Robert Cecil in 1598, a few weeks after the death of Philip II and the accession of his far less capable son Philip III.

Spain had once been a mighty world power and global empire, but by the 19th century, it had declined. In the late 1870s, Spain was so weak that it was bullied into selling the island of Cuba to the Confederate States. At the close of the 19th century, Spain's empire came to an official end when it was easily defeated by Japan in a war in the Pacific. Spain was the first European nation to be defeated by an Asian nation in the age of Imperialism. As part of its defeat, Spain was forced to concede its colonies in Guam and the Philippines to Japan.

In the interwar years, a civil war erupted in Spain between the Nationalists, who were supported aggressively by the United Kingdom and by France, and the Monarchists, who were supported somewhat lukewarmly by the German Empire. Though Germany had defeated the other two nations in the Great War and was assumed to be the most powerful nation in Europe militarily, the Nationalists won and Spain became a de factoEntente nation. Spain nonetheless remained neutral during the Second Great War.

Spain was left nearly uninhabitable when the Krolp discovered mercury beneath the country. The Krolp effectively strip-mined the whole of the country to get at the mercury.

As the United States prepared to fight the Krolp rather than allow them to strip-mine for silver and a small amount of gold deep below the surface of northeastern Utah, the Secretary of Alien Affairs shared some history with PresidentHarris Moffatt III. He likened the U.S. situation to the Spaniards' conquest of the Inca, and described how the Inca had created a settlement called Vilcabamba in order to escape the Spaniards. After about 40 years, the Spaniards destroyed Vilcabamba.

Early in the Civil War, the Spanish Nationalists under Marshal Sanjurjo were able to make tremendous gains. By 1938, Sanjurjo's forces held roughly half the country. This did not include Madrid, and so the Republic and the Nationalists were in a stalemate. And while Sanjurjo received support from Germany and Italy, the Republic received solid support from the Soviet Union, and less fervent support from Britain and France. When the Second World War broke out in October 1938, Sanjurjo declared war on Britain and France,[21]who, in response, began supplying the Republic more aggressively, gaining them a short-term advantage and eventual victory on the Battle of the Ebro, after which the coastal town of Vinaroz was reconquered and the previously divided Republican-held territory was unified again. However, the Nationalists exacted a price from the Allies, when Sanjurjo personally led the siege of Gibraltar, with the aid of German and Italian forces, and oversaw its fall in early 1939.[22]

After this, however, foreign aid to both sides dried up, as Germany and the Allies were concentrating all their efforts on the fighting in France.[23] Nonetheless, in March, 1939, Sanjurjo decided to concentrate on taking Madrid.[24]

Initially, the Nationalists gained some momentum, taking the University City District within a few weeks.[25] However, they could not get into Madrid proper. The Republicans succeeded in pushing the Nationalists out of University City by the middle of the summer.[26]

The Nationalists maintained the offensive on Madrid for the remainder of the year, and into the next, but the line outside Madrid continued to hold on into 1940.[27] Things looked particularly bleak for the Republic after the "big switch" of Summer of 1940 saw Britain and France align with Germany and cease supplying the Spanish Republic; however Germany was not in a position to help the Nationalists much more than they had been.[28] The Republic also gained one unexpected advantage: the arrival of a regiment of Czechoslovak troops who had been fighting in France, and refused to join the war against the Soviet Union.[29]

As fighting dragged on into 1941, the Spanish Civil War was once again a stalemate. Gradually, however, things began to turn in favor of the Republic. The British military deposed the pro-Navzi government of Horace Wilson in the spring.[30] Britain promptly withdrew from the Soviet Union, and began bombing German territory while fighting Italy in North Africa. While France continued its alliance with Germany for the time being, the French government also began supplying weapons to the Republic.[31] And in December, Czech sniper Vaclav Jezek killed Francisco Franco, one of Sanjurjo's most talented generals.[32]

The Nationalists managed to hold their positions throughout 1942 and into early 1943. Vaclav Jezek actively pursued Sanjurjo, but for the longest time, Sanjurjo didn't oblige him.[33] Finally, on a rainy day in the Fall of 1943, Sanjurjo visited the front, and Jezek shot him in the face.[34]

Republican President Manuel Azaña had Jezek brought to Barcelona where he publicly thanked Jezek for not "despairing of the Republic". He also made Jezek a Spanish citizen, captain in the Army of the Republic, and paid Jezek the bounty that had been placed on Sanjurjo's head.[35]

The Nationalists fell to infighting almost immediately, allowing the Republicans to rapidly retake the country. Several Nationalist officers fled to Portugal. Others were caught by the Republicans and summarily tried and executed. Finally, in early 1944, José Millán Astray became the last overall commander of the Nationalists just long enough to formally surrender and end the war.[36]

The remainder of 1944 saw the Republic reasserting itself throughout Spain. This led to reprisals against Nationalist soldiers, who were sent to re-education camps. Civilians who'd been too friendly with the Nationalists were also subject to acts of vengeance. Various foreign fighters left Spain. Some continued the war against Germany until that ended in April 1944. Others, such as the Czechoslovaks, no longer had a country, and found themselves uncertain as to their futures.

During the Race-German War of 1965, the Race invaded German-occupied France across the Pyrenees, using Spain as a launching point. The invasion was easily defeated by German forces, the only front of the war on which they decisively won. In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in the overall war, the Pyrenees became the border between the Race and newly-independent France, a situation which remained unchanged into the 21st Century.